During the 2019 Delta Symposium at Arkansas State University, we invited Jo McDougall, the Poet Laureate of Arkansas, to our campus. As I was shuttling her from a visit with students to drive to her evening reading, she asked about my work as a folklorist, mentioning her own interest in our field. McDougall explained how she enfolded folklore into so much of her early poetry that her graduate adviser at the University of Arkansas eventually asked her to broaden the content within her writing. Perhaps because her biography is connected more to the Arkansas Delta than the Ozarks, her poems are not included in this anthology. Nevertheless, her recognition that writing about places in Arkansas entails an engagement with the state's folklore and folklife remains a salient theme throughout much of the writing in this new anthology. In reviewing the selections and the editorial work of Phillip Douglas Howerton, I share her awareness of folklore's centrality to regional identity within the Delta and, by extension, the Ozarks.
Howerton's anthology is a fine contribution to a wider Ozark Studies series that Brooks Blevins is editing. This anthology is a sampler of literary genres that follows a chronology of four eras: the emergences of a region (to 1865), the social construction of regional culture (1865-1918), the promotion of a regional image (1918-1945), and the deconstruction of a regional image (1945-present). A concise introduction provides an overview of previous anthologies and literary interest in the Ozarks, and the book includes a wide variety of excerpts from novels, short stories, poetry, drama, and non-fiction. Well-known writers, including Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, Vance Randolph, John Gould Fletcher, Robert Heinlein, and Miller Williams are featured as are more recent literary artists such as Katie Estill, Michael Mahoney, and Christopher Crabtree.
Howerton provides interesting introductions to each of these four periods and to each writer. Various poems, essays, and short stories are presented in their entirety, and chapters from longer works will spark readers' interest in reading the wide range of novels that are associated with the region.
A curious ambivalence in Howerton's commentaries and the work of various writers runs through much of the anthology. On one hand, there is a strong sense of the Ozarks' distinctive history and culture. This affirmation of a regional identity, however, often is in tension with a wariness of essentialist representations of Ozark life. The critiques of exoticizing and stereotyping are well founded, and it is intriguing to discover ways that writers have constructed and deconstructed this imagery for at least two centuries. In this process, Howerton sometimes takes folklorists to task for portraying Ozarkers as rustic primitives, but this critique needs to be balanced by wider perspectives from folklore scholarship. As Jo McDougall notes, much of what is distinctive of the culture is intimately connected to the region's folklife. The stories, beliefs, music, rituals, occupational folkways, and other forms of expressive culture that flow throughout this anthology need to be understood more in connection to cultural patterns and types, and not written off as stereotypes and the romanticized reflections of outsiders. Folklore does permeate the region, and it remains a vital expression of history and culture. Consequently, it would be a serious omission to exclude a consideration of folklore from an anthology of regional writing.
The first selection affirms the crucial place of folklore within the region's identity, as Howerton provides an excellent version of the Osage creation story, "Finding of the Four Colors." Hlu-ah-wah-tah narrated this myth to Francis La Flesche a century ago, and this version combines elements of the mythic narrative type that features the separation of land from a cosmic sea with the earth-diver type. This first section also includes entries from Henry Rowe Schoolcraft's journal, episodes from George William Featherstonhaugh's account of his excursion through the slave states, and a substantial selection from Friedrich Gerstäcker's voluminous writing. This German novelist completed a number of travelogues during his time in Arkansas, and his writing has had a surprising influence in shaping perceptions about various regions in the United States. Throughout the first sections of the anthology, folklore is featured prominently in descriptions of root work and root doctors, allusions to ballads and fiddle tunes, depictions of occupational practices and rituals, and numerous expressions of folk culture. In diverse and vital ways, this anthology can provide ample fodder for scholarship by folklorists interested in literary studies.
Although Howerton recognizes the importance of folklore within regional and ethnic culture, he occasionally misrepresents folklore scholarship. Passages such as this one, "[Rosa Zagnoni] Marinoni seems to have chosen, as did many of the folklorists, the poorest and most backward of the hill folks as subjects," require a lot more context and intellectual history than is evident in this facile critique (170). Furthermore, in discussing the wonderful sonnets of Irene Carlisle, Howerton directly critiques "a view that is often delivered by the folklorists" as he asserts the idea that folklorists cast folklore as "deeply held beliefs or as a form of natural religion." Instead, Howerton portrays Carlisle as using folklore to symbolize hope and provide comfort (181). The argument is strange, since folklorists do explore deep connections between belief and culture, but "natural religion" is not part of our current lexicon. Furthermore, folklorists have consistently explored the affective appeal of folklore as a resource for personal strength. Howerton’s introductions also sometimes reveal a bias bordering on elitism, as when he describes some of Constance Wagner's characters as "intelligent and cultured" in contrast to "stereotypical hillbillies" (193). Perhaps the problem lies in the way that he words these passages, but it could be that this elitism also is evident in the ambivalence that the editor and various writers seem to have about the value of folklore. It is unfortunate that these and other (mis)characterizations mar his otherwise insightful treatments of folklore within literature.
One of the anthology's strengths lies in the vibrant way that Howerton includes contemporary writers. Three of my favorite selections in the section on contemporary writers are works from Donald Harrington, Steve Yates, and C. D. Albin. Harrington crafted an excellent essay that explores place names and place-name legends, including witty references to folk etymology. Yates offers a clever and somewhat folkloresque literary tale titled "Starfall" that reads like an affectionate parody of a folktale. C. D. Albin's short story "Hard to Go Home" pulls readers into a vividly portrayed contemporary Ozark world whose residents suffer from the challenges of limited opportunity and economic distress. Despite the story's bleakness, Albin's prose is elegant, and his writing even provides glimmers of hope. The depth of this pathos also is present in Albin's poem "Cicero Jack Considers the Cougar's Return." Howerton aptly selects this work to close out the volume, and it masterfully expresses a strong feeling of loss and longing without descending into a maudlin sense of nostalgia. Albin’s recognition of valuing what can be lost while working also to affirm what is part of our present is a theme that runs throughout the entire volume and relevant both to folklore as well as the literature of the Ozarks.
--------
[Review length: 1179 words • Review posted on September 3, 2020]